


the white caps of memory, confusing and violent

by neutrophilic



Category: The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August - Claire North
Genre: Letters, M/M, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-18
Updated: 2018-12-18
Packaged: 2019-09-21 18:30:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,367
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17048369
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/neutrophilic/pseuds/neutrophilic
Summary: Harry doesn't miss Vincent; he just lacks a purpose. Or, the next seven lives of Harry August.





	the white caps of memory, confusing and violent

**Author's Note:**

  * For [prosodiical](https://archiveofourown.org/users/prosodiical/gifts).



It all started again one damp morning in Harry's twenty-first life with the arrival of the post. His editor had been threatening to forward on his fanmail for weeks unless he delivered on his next draft, so it hadn't been a surprise when the postman had lined up several boxes crammed full of letters on his porch.

"Rosie back at the office said I should make you come in and get your mail yourself, Mr. August," the postman said, once Harry opened the door in response to his rapid knocks. "She said we don't deliver packages. But I told her this is just a lot of mail, and neither rain nor snow, and here I am." That he was, clad in an ineffective raincoat, grinning broadly.

Harry suspected he was fishing, either for a larger Christmas tip or the origin of all of those boxes, probably both. He'd forgotten somehow when he'd decided on an rural existence for this life, in hopes of being left alone, that the smaller the community, the less you could avoid people's curiosity. In almost any peaceful, large city, he could have blended in and been benignly left to his own devices.

Except almost every large city had a chapter of the Cronus Club, and he was no longer truly allowed to ignore them. Even here, in a forgotten corner of Maine, tucked far away from the coastline and any known kalachakra, Harry would be obligated to dig through all the mail to be sure that nobody from a Club had sent him a summons. The nearest chapter in Boston expected him to swing by at least once a year, more in the years when he published a book and had to meet with his publisher in person. As if that would somehow preclude him from sneaking around to spark off another Cataclysm, as if somehow he'd present himself to them, and they'd all immediately be able to tell. Unlikely, especially since none of them so far had been able to tell that the third attempt at Forgetting hadn't taken either.

After ridding himself of the postman and politely turning down his offer to help get the boxes inside, Harry dragged them in himself. The cardboard boxes were flimsy and wet and almost fell to pieces in his arms. The stacks of letters within had been bound together with thick bands that were sure to make his hands reek of rubber for the rest of the day. He made himself a cup of tea and thought about working on his latest novel: his hero was just about to put it all together and realize that the real mole in the organization was his handler. Instead, he sat down at his kitchen table and began to systematically sort through the mail.

His attempts at organization didn't last long. Nothing was clearly from a Club member, and he didn't have the patience to read praise for his books. They were hack jobs, a blatant ripoff of the James Bond novels with every hint of originality ironed out of them and enough errors introduced into his description of espionage that nobody from any agency would come knocking at his door to check up on him. He had a carefully maintained library full of unread reference books with cracked spines just in case someone did that he dutifully dusted twice a month.

Two boxes deep, he caught his index finger against a page and got a paper cut. He stuck the injured finger in his mouth and winced at the taste of rubber mingled with the metallic tang of his blood. His cup of tea was cold and commercial microwaves were about six years from hitting the market. He could still tackle the remaining boxes later and go to his writing. Instead, he fixed himself an elaborate sandwich and watched the rain hit against the windows of his cabin. Time unfolded for him and presented him with countless memories of watching rain across his many lives. Mostly as a child in a series of interminable classrooms, longing to be physically old enough that people would take him seriously. But, inevitably, when his thoughts turned to his fifteenth life, Harry got up and went back to the kitchen.

His days were beginning to blur together more and more, his lives getting jumbled together in his head. He could still straighten it out and place the right events in the right order, but it took effort he didn't always care to use. Harry almost wished that he was exhibiting the normal symptoms of an older kalachakra who could no longer remember long ago lives, but he could close his eyes and recall every detail of his first childhood, the first time he lived through the war, and his first divorce with perfect recall. He thought, instead, that it was just soul crushing boredom, the type that comes upon someone denied a purpose, but there wasn't anyone to ask. Akinleye as she was now understood him both better and worse than her previous incarnation and probably wouldn't have the answer either. Vincent would know, but Harry wouldn't like his answer. Not that Vincent could give it.

The letters wouldn't provide help either, but Harry returned to them anyways. Near the bottom of the last box, there was a letter with the return to address redacted. Or, rather, someone had scribbled with a black marker over the whole upper left quadrant of the envelope. The remaining address was typed and directed to his pen name via his publisher's office. So there was a summons, Harry thought, or a question from another time that they thought he wouldn't like. They hadn't even bothered to get a new envelope. Faintly irritated, he set it aside and tore through the rest of the useless letters. Too bad nobody recycled yet; he'd have to burn them all later or lug them down to the dump. Actions that would hasten the end of the world by seconds, not that the Club would notice or care.

Finally, all he had left was the censored letter. He felt along the envelope where the return address should be, and the sender had taken a pen to deface that before turning to a marker. At least they'd cared enough to make it impossible to get the address from the indents of the typewriter keys against the paper. The paper itself was cheap and yielded easily to his letter opener. The letter itself had been carefully folded into perfect thirds and some of the marker had bled right through to it.

> Dear Mr. Ransome,
> 
> I was greatly enjoying your latest work when I noticed that Simon Rush shot his revolver seven times in the climatic battle. That model only has six chambers. It seemed sloppy for you.
> 
> Your fan,  
>  V. Rankis

Harry's hands shook as he slowly put the letter back onto the table. He went to his front door, noted that it was raining quite heavily now, then put on his rain boots and raincoat. Umbrella in hand, he walked out into the storm and headed towards his favorite path through the woods. He barely registered the sound of the rain filtered through the pine needles and the way they clung damply to his boots. The feeling of cold water down his neck and soaking into his shirt was more obvious, but what was the worst that could happen to him? He caught pneumonia, died, and then had to live through puberty again?

Vincent alive. Vincent alive and writing to him. He'd been so sure that the Club had wiped him out; they'd as good as told him that.

Harry closed his eyes, though he needn't have bothered, he was no longer aware at all of his familiar surroundings, and recalled the letter in its entirety. The thing was that Vincent wasn't wrong: there were too many bullets in that gun, he just hadn't cared when writing it. He'd stopped caring about writing by the middle of the second book, when it became clear that it wasn't going to help, but he'd carried on for lack of a better thing to do.

Now, of course, he immediately had a better thing to do. He could even admit that he felt relief at finally having a task again. He turned around and set back towards his cabin, even remembering to open his umbrella when the trees thinned out enough to allow it. Time, finally, was of the essence.

 

———

Harry’s memories came on gradually enough in his sixteenth life that he’d already begun to catalog easily accessible sources of poison before he’d completely remembered the reason why he needed to do so. By his fourth birthday, his mind was made up, and his plan was finalized. It was kill or be killed and let the world fall to pieces in the bargain. This sense of purpose buffered him against the earlier than usual decline of his mother and the typical indignities of an adult mind trapped in a child’s body.

It was only when he was on the train heading towards Vincent’s point of origin that doubt started to creep in. He’d murdered before and would likely do so again. Besides, Vincent had already killed him twice. Really, he’d just be returning the favor. It was just that he’d never ended someone permanently before; the nameless soldiers he’d killed in the war always came back in the next life. Richard Lisle had to be dealt with anew too in a decade or so.

He wavered all the way to Vincent’s childhood home, basket in hand. Harry had nearly made it there when he noticed someone strikingly familiar standing at the street corner: Virginia. He stopped at once. She waved at him, no, at someone behind him. Then there were hands grabbing at him—why hadn’t he learned how to fight with a child’s body?—then something rough against his face. Then nothing.

He woke to darkness and chloroform still clouding his thoughts. From the feel of a splinter embedding itself in his face, the container was wooden. Everything lurched, and Harry quickly realized there wasn’t enough space to sit up. He dug the palms of his hands against the wooden slats to distract himself from being sick. By the time Virginia and her accomplices got him to their final destination, his fingers were raw and bleeding from his futile attempts to escape.

 

———

In his nineteenth life, Harry joined the British secret service again. It hadn’t been his original plan for that life, but when he cast about for something to do instead, it had seemed like the perfect choice. He’d learned a lot of valuable skills from his time in service. Skills that he might want to use again without alerting the Cronus Club to how he hadn’t actually Forgotten.

He didn’t regret his choice until 1971 when Shannon from three desks down asked him if he’d met the new American yet. “He’s very earnest,” she said, scrunching her face up, “I believe his name is Franklin Phearson.”

 

———

The seed of the idea to be a novelist had been planted back in his seventh life, when he’d been a professor at University College London. Living so close to the London chapter of the Cronus Club meant he was constantly invited to dinners and all kinds of parties. The 1820s steering committee had decided to invest in not one, but two massive ballrooms this go around. Virginia had been relieved of her stewardship of the younger members, and her replacement, Lucy, who normally decamped to Canada as soon as she hit puberty, was wild for masquerade parties. Despite his best efforts to wiggle out of as many of those commitments as possible, Harry still ended up accumulating a collection of masks, since Lucy pouted if the members wore the same costume too frequently.

At a particular party in 1965, Harry spent most of it near the punch, feeling more awkward than usual. Another younger kalachakra, whose mask couldn’t quite conceal the acne lining his jaw, joined him and downed several drinks in quick succession.

“Have we met?” he asked.

“I’m not sure,” Harry said, who’d also had a lot of the punch by that point.

“I can’t remember if our identities are supposed to be secret. The masks make me think yes.”

“That’s a safe bet,” Harry replied, already bored again.

Charity Hazelmere drifted over. Her black mask lined with feathers matched her stiff black bodice, her only concession to the party theme. “Do you think it’s wise to be drinking so young?” she asked the other ouroboran.

“Does it matter?” he said. “My liver gets me no matter what I do. Why not be an alcoholic?”

Charity sniffed and made to move away.

“Oh, I don’t really mean it,” he said, putting down his glass. “I’m even going to have a job this life. I think I’m going to be a novelist. Don’t worry, I know the rules: no deathless prose and no sci-fi.”

Harry never learned the name of the incipient writer, and, when he was forced to return to the whirl of Cronus Club events in his 18th life and beyond, he never encountered someone similar. Probably wiped out in the Cataclysm somehow.

 

———

The Cronus Club brought him to St. Margot’s Asylum for Unfortunates. One of Virginia’s unnamed associates carried Harry and didn’t respond to Harry’s yelling or blows with his fists or feet. He deposited Harry in an empty, windowless room.

Eventually, Virginia came in and was similarly unaffected by Harry’s attempts to escape. “I’m sorry, dear,” Virginia said, once he’d tired himself out. “I understand you have a history here, but it’s the only place we could get our hands on that was suitable for our purpose.” She then went back into the hallway and came back with a dented metal bowl filled with oatmeal.

Harry didn’t ask, and he didn’t take the food.

Virginia continued, “You see, after you died, after you both died, all of the ouroborans met and tried you and Vincent Rankis _in absentia_. We all believe in justice. Since you were really an accomplice to what happened and there were all kinds of mitigating factors, your sentence is only to Forget.”

Harry kept his face perfectly blank.

“I know you think it won’t work, but Vincent didn’t know everything. The Club still knows more about how to Forget than he ever did. There’s a chemist who’s about to be born and sort everything all out for you in a couple of years.”

“And if it doesn’t?” he asked.

“Well, then we’ve been authorized to get your point of origin out of you,” she said, briskly, “but I don’t think it’ll come to that, our chemist is very clever.”

“What if I want to leave?”

“I wouldn’t advise it, then we’d be obligated to make sure you wouldn’t be born. Such a waste after Akinleye advocated for you so strongly.”

Harry took the oatmeal and dubiously prodded it with his spoon. Living through the Blitz so many times had given him the ability to eat almost anything, but that didn’t mean he enjoyed it.

“Don’t worry,” she said, covering her hands with his, “I’ve been told I’ve Forgotten before. You can’t miss what you don’t remember.”

 

———

Once Harry made it back to his cabin, throughly drenched, he peeled off his outer layers and his sodden socks and went to his kitchen. The letter was still on the table. He dried his hands off on his dishtowel and called the Boston chapter of the Cronus Club at once. After promising Joe in Boston to drive down for New Year’s Eve, he managed to direct the conversation to Akinleye on a pretext for researching his latest book.

Joe didn’t know where she was, but he told Harry to try the Berlin Club. They didn’t know either and gave him a few other possibilities. By the time Harry finally found out that Akinleye was either about to set out on a journey to see the source of the Amazon river or had already gone from someone in Rio, his pants were only unpleasantly damp instead of soaked through. Harry gave his number to the man in Rio.

He then set about discerning everything possible from the letter and the envelope without destroying them. He didn’t learn anything he didn’t already know: the paper was cheap and the obscuring ink was thorough.

Harry spent three tremendously unproductive days waiting for Akinleye to call him back. He’d almost resolved to go down to Brazil himself and track her down when his phone rung.

“Hello—“

“Why are you calling?” she cut in. Her voice was almost completely obscured by static. “You’re supposed to barely know me.”

“Vincent wrote me,” he replied. The plastic telephone receiver was heavy in his hand. He always missed their heft when lighter models became popular.

There was a long pause. “Are you sure it’s him?”

“Yes.”

“I know that—“

“I thought he hadn’t been born. I thought the Club had made sure of that,” Harry said all in a rush. He’d disposed of all of the other mail yesterday. Vincent’s letter, looking a little tattered, was clutched in his hand.

Another long silence. “They sealed the final verdict, but I thought so too. But besides—“

“If he’s writing me, then he must be planning something.”

Akinleye sighed loudly enough that he could hear it even over all the static. “But besides, he Forgot before all of that. I know your theory. But I know he did. I examined him myself. He’s not that good. Even you’re not that good.”

“You don’t know him like I do,” Harry replied.

“No,” she said, “but use your memory, do you remember anything being invented too early? Because I don’t.”

Harry had been thinking of little else and had to admit that he couldn’t.

“See? _If_ it’s really Vincent and _if_ he really hasn’t Forgotten, there’s still time to stop him.”

 

———

There was a particular night back in Pietrok-112 that Harry liked to pretend he didn’t think about often. He hadn’t written about it. It hadn’t meant anything. All that had happened was that his hand had cramped from triple checking his calculations. That was normal. That happened all the time. But when he started to shake his hand out, Vincent caught it with his hands and began to massage at the base of Harry's thumb. Harry's fingers spasmed, but Vincent kept at it.

"I've had an idea about super-cooling," Vincent said, "but I'm not sure if the science here is there yet." He continued on in that matter, talking about work without referring once to what he was doing.

They never talked about, and it never happened again. Not in that life.

 

———

Before Harry joined the secret service in his nineteenth life, he joined the RAF as a ground mechanic again. Out of all of the war time experiences available, it seemed the most desirable to him. Sometime in the middle of 1944, when he was out on leave trying to enjoy himself, Akinleye found him.

She sat down at his solitary table in a pub with two full pints. It was the first time he’d seen her since his fifteenth life, and for a second, Harry felt imaginary twinges as if he was suffering from radiation poisoning all over again.

“Has anyone talked to you properly about Vincent?” she said.

“Nobody’s even said his name to me,” Harry said. “Nobody will even admit that I might have been involved in the last Cataclysm. I think they’re worried I’ll get ideas.”

Akinleye drank deeply from one of her glasses and then began. "After you died there was a reckoning within the Club. People wanted to do a lot of different things to you, to you both. Vigilante justice was a concern, and the Club doesn't have clear rules about what happens if one of us harms another kalachakra. Some cooler heads remembered that there'd been a vote for what to do with Victor Hoeness. I proposed the idea of a trial with evidence on both sides and the jury to comprise of all living kalachakra. You were easy. Only a slim majority thought you should be punished at all after everything had been discussed, and it was simple to convince them that Forgetting would be enough."

Harry opened his mouth, and she put her hand over it and glared at him.

"Vincent was harder. Mostly people wanted to punish him, but some of the new kalachakra realized that they wouldn't exist if not for his actions. They argued against wiping him out. In the end, it was decided that he'd be tried three times, and if they voted for him to not be born all three times, then that would be the sentence. And, to ensure that this could be carried out, they'd make him Forget every life. But, because of the need to stop people from taking matters into their own hands, some details were deliberately obscured and the last verdict was private. Even I don't know what it is for sure."

"What do you think?" Harry asked, sitting up straight.

"Death." She pushed her full glass across the table. “Here, I shouldn’t.”

Harry drained it.

“You know, when I was stuck in Switzerland waiting for you, I kept thinking about how I was going to relax after all of it was over. I’d been running around trying to keep all of the Clubs afloat and then this. I thought about all of the parties I’d attend, all of the men I’d seduce, all of the drugs I’d do. And then I read your book. Did I really do that in my previous life?”

He nodded, picturing the maid dancing out across the ocean.

“It put me off it all. If I had the ability to do that once, then I might do it again.” She played with the condensation on the glass, writing the Arabic alphabet.

“But how did you convince them to make me Forget?” Harry said, once it became clear that she wasn’t going to say more unprompted.

“Most of the evidence was from your book.”

“And in that I failed to Forget twice.”

“Oh, right,” Akinleye said. “I edited it.”

“What?”

“I edited it twice. The first version for Vincent was crude. There wasn’t enough time. I took out everything about me and most of the details about your point of origin. I think he still could have figured out who you really are, but it would have been harder. The version for the Club was a more involved edit, I took out how you’re a mnemonic and made it seem like Vincent just botched your Forgettings. Which he did, but—,” she waved her hand dismissively.

“Akinleye,” he said.

“They would have made sure you weren’t born if I hadn’t edited it. The Club would have gotten to you first only because Vincent’s younger, but he’d have blotted you out too.”

“You shouldn’t have done that. What if it hadn’t worked?”

“They would’ve made me Forget again, which I already did and am better off for it,” she said. “Besides, kalachakra will always do a lot for their first rescuer.”

 

———

They brought Vincent back as a baby to St. Margot’s in Harry’s sixteenth life. He could hear Vincent’s wails through the walls most of the time. They kept them separated at first.

Harry, frustrated by another failed attempt at deciphering Linear A, a writing system used by Minoans, cracked during one of Virginia’s frequent visits.

“Could I see him?” he asked. “I won’t do anything to him. It’s just very dull here.”

She refused initially, but then relented several months later. Vincent as a baby had thick, chubby cheeks and almost no hair, exactly as Harry would have predicted. He’d been crying desolately in his crib until Harry came in close enough for him to try to grab at Harry. Then he mostly just shrieked happily.

The amount of time their keepers let Harry spend with Vincent increased exponentially from there. Vincent as a toddler would follow Harry around, trying to throw away Harry’s books to get Harry to pay attention to him. Familiar behavior from him. Until, suddenly, they refused all access. Harry reckoned that it was about Vincent’s third birthday, and they were worried about what he’d remember.

Not long after that, Virginia waltzed into his dull cell, beaming. “Good news. We’ve almost got the concoction just right for you, dear.”

That night, Harry snuck out of his room during the dinner shift change. Some things never changed about this place. The lock to Vincent’s room was a moment to pick. Vincent was standing near the door, a wooden block in hand, as if he was going to fend off an attacker with that alone.

“Meet me in three lives at Cambridge again,” Harry said.

Vincent stared at him silently, until he slowly closed the door and relocked it again.

Two days later, they tried to make him Forget.

 

———

Harry drank enough in his twentieth life that even he couldn’t clearly remember most of it. He’d died young of a heart attack. It hadn’t helped. Franklin Phearson, the rat poison in Pietrok-112, Vincent trying to kill him into someone that’d agree with him, all of it was too close to the surface. He didn’t know how he’d ever be free of any of it.

Writing to Rory Hulne had worked somewhat before, and Harry tried it again in his twenty-first life. He got almost the exact same letter back, but he realized that the therapy had come more from the experience of writing than Rory Hulne’s anemic reply. Thus, he’d become a writer and poured out the most painful details of his previous lives on the page. Except then he’d had to ruthlessly edit out all of the most truthful parts for fear of the Cronus Club realizing what Akinleye and he had done.

In the end, he didn’t locate Vincent Rankis that life. He wrote six more novels and received exactly two more letters from Vincent. The second came about two years after the first. Harry’s novel was still unfinished—the real mole unrevealed and his hero in peril—and his publisher had given up on him. That letter just urged him to write more. The third was also short, uncharacteristic for Vincent, who’d always loved to expound on about everything when Harry had known him. It arrived shortly after Harry had delivered his second to last manuscript to his editor and received his usual diagnosis of multiple myeloma again.

> Dear Mr. Ransome,
> 
> There appears to be no shortage of people around Simon Rush ready to betray him at the drop of a hat. But he never returns the favor, always loyal to the end. Strange for a spy.
> 
> Always your fan,  
>  V. Rankis

 

———

Despite himself, Harry went to Cambridge in 1945 in his nineteenth life. As a physics doctoral student instead of a lecturer, but all the same. It took him slightly under three years to complete his degree. It would have been two, but he stalled.

Vincent didn’t come.

 

———

Harry resented having to pretend to be linear again. He was sick of pretending that his seventeenth life was his first life, and he was especially annoyed by having to go all the way through schooling again.

But having to pretend to be mad enough to be shut up in St. Margot’s for his eighteenth was worse. The Cronus Club fished him out after 79 days and took him to London to explain what being an ouroboran meant.

“We’re sorry, darling, but we thought it’d take longer for you to be sent there,” Virginia explained.

“Have we been introduced?” Harry asked and stuck out his hand to shake. “I’m Harry.”

 

———

Before Harry had succumbed to drink in his twentieth life, he’d made another attempt at being a historian. This time he’d focused on the Thirty Years War.

“Is that wise?” Akinleye had demanded.

Harry ignored her. Not long before he gave it all up, he came across a fragment of a letter from someone named Koch.

> …lived through three Great Cataclysms. But I do not know if I will weather the small changes that buffet us through lives that are unnoticed by our kin. I do not know if I will survive a fourth cataclysm, no matter if it is slow or fast. I do not know if you will survive either. I have written you this letter three times before, and you remain stubbornly unconvinced, but if you were to be swayed, then I would know you hadn’t made it through.
> 
> Yours,  
>  M. Koch

 

———

There were two questions that Harry returned to again and again after his sixteenth life. Would he have actually killed Vincent _in utero_? He liked to believe that answer was yes.

Would he have turned Vincent down in his fifteenth life, if Vincent had propositioned him? He liked to believe that he would have.

But liking to believe and believing are two different things.

 

———

In Harry’s last book, he wrote his hero infiltrating Cambridge and befriending a chemist in his quest to thwart the end of the world. The chemist was lonely and eager for glory, easy prey for Harry’s villain too. In the end, Simon Rush had no choice but to turn his chemist friend into the authorities, ruining his life.

If Vincent wrote a letter to reply to his request being fulfilled, Harry never received it. He died shortly after publication.

 

———

Harry got his physics doctorate at twenty-two in his twenty-second life. Fitting, really. He returned yet again to the ivory towers of Cambridge as a physics lecturer after the war.

Before the fall term of 1945 started, Harry managed to get his hands on a list of the enrolled students. It had been easy. All he’d had to do was ask the right person. Somewhere in one of his previous lives, he’d learned the importance of sweet talking the administrators and secretaries that actually made a university run. He hadn’t known that his first time around at Cambridge or when he’d been at University College London or LMU Munich, the one time he’d been under the mistaken impression that academia abroad was less consumed with petty political struggles than in the UK. Maybe acting as Vincent’s glorified secretary had been good for him.

Vincent’s name hadn’t been on the list. He hadn’t expected that, not really, but all of the names were known to him from his sixth life. There wasn’t anyone new that could be Vincent under an assumed name. He’d been so sure—but then again, Vincent must have sensed this as a trap. He should have known nothing could ever be easy with Vincent.

Five days into the term, Harry was contemplating his options over a deeply mediocre glass of red wine. Beggars couldn’t be choosers right after the war was over, and the food had already started to improve somewhat from the Blitz. But the wine always took longer to get good again than Harry was willing to wait. Wine, alcohol in general, wasn’t a good idea, but if he was going to have to run Vincent to ground all over again, contemplating that sober seemed tremendously unappealing. Mainly he wondered if quitting now would be too petty or if he should wait until they refused him the professorship for the first time. He swirled his glass and watched the legs of the wine slowly run down the sides instead of drinking it, suddenly immensely weary.

None of it would matter to anyone other than him in the next life. Nobody but him would care if he ducked out on his responsibilities, or if he instead slogged through yet another shadowy repetition of his previous lives. His sixth life mashed together with his twelfth or his thirteenth would be painful, but there had been worse lives. The Club was convinced, the Club had been convinced for at least two lives that he’d actually Forgotten this time. The volume of social invitations had waned precipitously at least.

He got up to dump the rest of the bottle down the drain. Wine made him maudlin. He almost wished that he could say he’d forgotten, but he’d wanted to wallow in self-pity this night. Only to realize that that wasn’t what he wanted at all.

Suddenly, Harry heard frantic pounding on the door. He didn’t remember anyone impinging on his solitude in his sixth life on this day, which meant a kalachakra was likely at the door. Vincent, he thought at once. But he’d made a study of all of the new students once they’d arrived in case his memory had somehow been faulty, and no such luck. Possibly someone had come to probe at him about the cataclysm, but that was far enough in the past that many kalachakra had started to forget the details, only that something terrible had happened. If someone came to murder him in his flat over it, then he wouldn’t have to make a choice about quitting. Almost a consultation prize for having to live through puberty again. And the shitty food of the Blitz and the barely drinkable wine.

And the war. And having to chose yet again not to do anything to stop it. Which, as always, was and wasn’t a choice.

Finally, he was at the door. Somewhere along his slow journey there, his visitor had decided to knock at a more reasonable volume. Nevertheless, Harry was sure to get an earful about it tomorrow from his neighbors. The peephole, as always, was useless. He'd meant to fix it, but like in his sixth life, the chore had lingered undone.

There was a revolver in the drawer of the table by the door, and Harry carefully retrieved it and placed it within easy reach. There were skills that translated well across lives and skills that didn’t. Shooting a gun was the first, but accurately shooting it in hand to hand combat was the second. Still, he felt better with it nearby than not.

He didn't bother to fix his twisted up jumper before flinging the door open. Only the cool feel of the doorknob in his hand kept him standing at the sight of Vincent on the other side. It was exactly as if Harry's thoughts had summoned him there. Or, more likely, as if Harry had fallen asleep in his lumpy armchair and dreamed him there.

Dimly, Harry thought he ought to say something. At the very least, he needed to get his face under control. He couldn't feel it properly. It could be doing anything, like displaying all of his unnamed feelings.

Vincent, too, didn't say anything, his eyes fixed on Harry's. His face was flushed, as if with the same intensity of emotion as Harry currently felt. But then Vincent swayed forwards, and Harry was hit with the stench of juniper berries, ethanol, and sweat. Probably just redness from booze then.

The flesh of his palm ached from how hard he was gripping the doorknob. Harry had only just decided what he felt was mainly anger when Vincent stepped closer and grabbed at the doorjamb to steady himself.

"It's you," Vincent said, "my Harry." He threw his head back and laughed, full-throated.

Harry didn't move. He watched Vincent convulse with laughter, clutching at the door frame, and did nothing.

"Excuse me," the waspish voice of Tom Neary, one of Harry's least favorite people and physically closest neighbor, broke in. "Do you know what time it is?"

Vincent quieted and teetered closer still to Harry. "You do know the time," he said quietly, like it was a secret. "I thought you didn't, and it was my fault."

"You should come in," Harry said. He'd been sure he'd been about to tell Vincent to go home and sober up, but he'd never been able to fully predict himself around Vincent.

Vincent at once, tried to straighten up and walk in. The effect almost seemed calculated, as if he was only acting drunk. Vincent then careened into Harry's coatrack as Harry applied himself to the task of closing the door and locking it.

“What are you doing here?” Harry asked.

“Not walking, I can tell you that,” Vincent said. He looked up at Harry through his lashes. “Would you help me?”

Harry moved towards him, and Vincent latched onto his arm. He radiated heat and the powerful smell of gin. Slowly, they stumbled towards Harry's sitting area.

"You didn't redecorate at all this time," Vincent said into Harry's ear. "It's just like I remember."

Harry shivered at the feeling of Vincent's breath against his neck, and then he was furious again. He didn't trust Vincent for a second, he doubted that Vincent was actually drunk, and if he'd known from the book what Harry wanted— Harry stiffened, and Vincent only leaned into him further, boneless.

"I missed you, you know, when I was Simon, and later," Vincent said and stopped, pulling on Harry's arm.

For a moment, they almost toppled over, Harry still trying to walk forward, and Vincent planted as firmly as possible in the same spot. Vincent maneuvered so they were facing each other and wrapped his hand around Harry's shoulder.

"I didn't miss you at all," Harry said.

"Liar," Vincent said, fondly, and kissed Harry.

It was arguably the worst kiss of any of Harry's lives. Even his very first one in his very first life had been more successful. Vincent had somehow managed to get Harry's lip with his canine. The angle was bad. Vincent's breath was indescribably awful, and he was probably actively plotting to pull the world down around their ears. Harry didn't care. He kissed back.

"I should sit. I haven't slept for days," Vincent said, abruptly breaking the kiss. He then made it to Harry's armchair and promptly passed out.

Harry sat too and watched the sliver of Vincent's neck revealed by his collar. It didn't matter what Vincent had meant by it all. After all, they had all the time in the world and then some. He would figure it out.

**Author's Note:**

> The title is from Change of Time by Josh Ritter.


End file.
